Reports of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY No. 52 THE CULTURE HISTORY OF LOVELOCK CAVE, NEVADA Gordon L. Grosscup Issued October 15, 1960 The University of California Archaeological Survey Department of Anthropology University of California Berkeley 4, California TH1E CULTURE HISTORY OF LOVELOCK CAVE, NEVADA Gordon L. Grosscup UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY REPORT NO. 52 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREEFACE . * . i INTRODUCTION......... ... 1 HISTORY OF INTEREST IN LOVELOCK CAVE. .. .... 1 PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE CAVE AND ITS DEPOSITS .... 3 DISTURBANCES AND EXCAVATIONS. .. ...... 7 PHYSICAL STRATIGRAPHY OF LOT 15 . * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 TH AGE OF LOVELOCK CAVE DEPOSITS * 0 0 0 0 0 0 * 0 0 0 0 10 MATERIAL CULTURE. * * * * 0 0 0 0 a 12 0 Ground Stone ....... * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 Chipped Stone. .... * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 a 16 Baked Clay ........ 0 0 0 0 17 Bone and Horn Objects. 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 Objects Made of Leather and IIntestines 0 0 0 6 a 23 Wooden Objects . * * * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25 Shell Objects. * *0 -0 0 0 0 0 0 0 37 Cordage and Woven Objects. * * * * s 0 0 0 0 0 0 40 CONCLUSIONS . * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY, . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 67 EXPLANATION OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0* * 0 72 ILLUSTRATIONS Following Rage MAP * 0 ..lb.Is a ..* ID lb .......... 0 0 0 0 * *ID 0 *72 PREFACE Almost thirty years have passed since L. L. Loud and M. R. Harrington's report on their excavations in Lovelock Cave was published. In the inter- vening period, nearby sites such as Humboldt Cave, Leonard Rockshelter, and Hidden Cave have been excavated, as well as a series of caves in the Winnemucca Lake area and several caves and open sites around Honey Lake. All of these sites have produced artifacts of types similar to, or identi- cal with, those from Lovelock Cave; however, none has produced the great quantity of well-preserved material that Lovelock Cave has, nor have they covered the long time span of the Lovelock Cave deposits, and, finally, they have not shown, with such clarity, the changes in material culture that are apparent in Lovelock Cave. In Loud and Harrington's report of 1929, the cultural changes demon- strated for the Lovelock Culture were demarcated by a few key cultural items into three temporal periods, i.e., Early, Transitional, and Late. Much of the cultural content, though well described, could not be charac- terized as deriving from any particular time segment within the Lovelock Culture period. Difficulties arose in attempts to tie other Lovelock components into the Lovelock sequence. Unfortunately, the Lovelock Cave material with the best associational data, that excavated by Harrington, is stored in the Heye Foundation, Museum of the American Indian, in New York City, and hence has been relatively inaccessible for study purposes to western students. Through the generosity of the American Philosophical Society, Penrose Fund, and assistance from the Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, the author was enabled to spend two and a half months in New York City studying the Harrington collection from Lovelock Cave. The following paper attempts to derive as much chronological informa- tion as possible from the Lovelock Cave material in the collections of the Heye Foundation and from Loud's material which was excavated earlier and is now stored in the University of California Lowie Museum of Anthro- pology at Berkeley, from the Nevada State Historical Society in Reno, and from the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. Catalog numbers bearing the prefixes Il and '21 refer to specimens in the University of California Lowie Museum of Anthropology. Prefix number 112', when pertaining to a burial, refers to specimens in the same insti- tution. As a prefix to an item of material culture., number 1121 refers to specimens in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, as do prefix numbers 113', 11531, and t161. Elaborate prefixes, such as '20.2', refer to specimens in the American Museum of Natural History. I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. E. Burnett, and Dr. F. Dock- stadter of the Museum of the American Indian, Dr. James Ford of the Ameri- can Museum of Natural History, Mrs. Clara Beatty of the Nevada State Historical Society, Mr. James Calhoun of the Nevada State Museum, and to the late Professor Edward Gifford of the University of California Lowie Museum of Anthropology, for their help and interest in this project. - ii - INTRODUCTION Lovelock Cave is situated on the north slope of the Humboldt Range, at an elevation of about 4240 + 20 feet above sea level. It was about 350 feet above the shoreline of Humboldt Lake, which was approximately two miles to the west and north of the cave at the time of the 1912 ex- cavations. The cave, which was carved out by wave action during a high stage of Lake Lahontan, was formed in a dome of limestone, which appears to protrude through the lake sediments. The erosional forces, which re- moved approximately half of the dome on the side facing the valley floor, excavated a hollow (Lovelock Cave) in the remaining limestone, approxi- mately 40 feet deep, 160 feet wide, and up to 20 feet high. The slope leading to the cave and the floor of the mouth of the cave itself con- sists of talus from the eroded and collapsed dome. Humboldt Lake varies markedly in size between the period of the fall drought and the spring runoff, and from year to year with climatic fluc- tuations. Its major source is the Humboldt River, which drains the greater portion of north central Nevada. The lake was described fre- quently, but disparagingly, in journals of explorers and emigrants, as a marshy area choked with tule, rush, and cattail, with small areas of stagnant water (see Heizer and Krieger, 1956, pp. 3-5, for a reproduc- tion of several of these 1840-1850 accounts). Despite its noxious char- acter to the early western migrants, Humboldt Lake was of tremendous importance to the native inhabitants. Besides its use as a major source of tule and rush for basketry and mats, the lake supported a large fish population, seasonally served as the abode of a wide variety of migrant water fowl, and provided tubers., shoots, and seeds. One of the main aboriginal plant food resources was the nut of the piinon pine (Pinus monophylla). Stands of these trees are to be found on the higher slopes of the Stillwater Range, about twenty miles to the east, HISTORY OF INTEREST IN LOVELOCK CAVE Lovelock Cave was apparently called Horseshoe Cave by the early mi- grants (W.P.A., 1940, p. 138), and the collapsed limestone dome does sug- gest a horseshoe in general appearance. Sarah Hopkin's account of her people (Hopkins, 1883) relates a myth about a former people who were killed by the Northern Paiute in a cave near Humboldt Lake, presumed by - 1 - Loud and Harrington to be Lovelock Cave. She states (ibid., pp. 73-75) that her people did not know of the cave until the enemy, the Saydocarah, took refuge there. Loud and Harrington (op. cit., p. 167) have published an account of a visit to the cave, about 1887, by John T. Reid, who relates how he was told a similar tale by Captain Natches, Mrs. Hopkin's brother, while at the cave. According to an account obtained by Mr. Reid from James H. Hart., and published by Loud and Harrington (op. cit., pp. 168-169), Hart and David Pugh filed a mining claim on the cave in 1911 (presumably under the name "Sunset Guano Cave," which is the name Loud used for the cave in 1912), and from the fall of that year through the spring of 1912 removed and shipped to San Francisco about five carloads of bat guano. After Hart and Pugh stopped work in the cave, a Mr. George Stautts removed about a carload of guano from the cave, according to Hart's account. Between April 1 and August 1, 1912, L. L. Loud excavated in the cave for Indian artifacts for the University of California and the Nevada State Historical Society. Between 1912 and 1924, private collectors burrowed in the cave searching for artifacts. From July, 1924, to October of the same year, M. R. Harrington, working for the Heye Foundation, Museum of the American Indian, conducted further excavations in the cave, assisted by L. L. Loud. About 1936, Nels Nelson, of the American Museum of Natural History, visited the cave and made a very small collection, presumably from the sur- face. In 1936, a University of California field party, led by U. F. Heizer, visited the cave and collected specimens from the surface, from crevices, and from under rockfalls. In 1949, Heizer and John A. Mills collected a number of samples for radiocarbon dating from beneath a rockfall in the southwestern part of the cave (see Heizer, 1956, pp. 55-57, for the location of these samples). In 1950, a University of California field party visited the cave and collected specimens from the surface and from underneath rockfalls. Private collectors still visit the cave, and it has been reported that a large net and a child's mummy were found there within the last decade. - 2 - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE CAVE AND ITS DEPOSITS As mentioned above, the cave is approximately 160 feet wide, 40 feet deep, and up to 20 feet high, according to Loud.